It is not true that before becoming a popular football manager Brendan Rodgers was a tantalising stand-up comedian, whose best joke went thus: "A man with a slightly disconcerting habit of patting interlocutors on the cheeks while staring them in the eye with a blend of friendly earnestness and deranged confidence walks into a bar and says: 'Hello, I would like an orange juice please and something to take home for my pet'. The barman asks: 'What type of pet do you have?' The man replies to this question."
It's not a very good joke, is it? When all is said and done, it is badly let down by the lack of a punchline. The buildup was fine, you might even go so far as to call it promising, but ultimately you have to conclude that it was a non-gag. A flop. Downright irritating, if you want to be frank. Feel familiar, Liverpool fans?
Liverpool's season and style of play seems sadly bereft of certain crucial components, such as reliability in front of goal, reliability at the back, basic toughness and positive results, all of which means the club are currently three points and two places worse off now than they were at this stage last season and, of course, out of the Cup after being bullied by mighty Oldham Athletic.
Still, the campaign has also had some highs, of course: indeed, at one stage Liverpool were threatening to play so well that Rodgers predicted they could storm up the table and finish in second place that was right before they lost at home to Aston Villa; and several weeks later they looked so close to getting their act together that Rodgers predicted they could storm up the table and finish fourth that was just before they lost at home to West Bromwich Albion. Rodgers wisely refrained from declaring Liverpool imminent Euro Vase champions before last night's first leg in St Petersburg but he unwisely opened his mouth afterwards to baffle listeners with talk of "a near-on perfect away performance" after Liverpool were deservedly beaten 2-0 by Zenit.
There is no shame in losing to a team as talented and expensively-assembled as Zenit
unless you then try to convince people who actually saw the match that the loss was some kind of unjust anomaly and that, if we overlook trifles such as appalling finishing, patchy interplay and feeble defending, the losers were moral victors. There is, of course, something even more basic than defending and attacking effectively and even easier to get right: talking.
And yet previous Liverpool managers have failed even on that front: Roy Hodgson alienated the few Anfield regulars who were prepared to cut him some slack when he started babbling about sides such as Wolves and Birmingham being fearsome opponents and Kenny Dalglish lost his messiah status when he began guffing about conspiracies everywhere and trumpeting advertising deals as major honours. After those two flops Liverpool fans have been prepared to give Rodgers time to repair years of neglect and ineptitude, and some even maintain that Rodgers's recruits such as Fabio Borini and Joe Allen will yet prove inspired hires, but it is hard for anyone to be convinced that Rodgers knows what he is doing when he persistently spouts blatant bull.
